Legal Era 8th Annual 40 Under 40 Rising Star Awards 2023

Legal Era 8th Annual 40 Under 40 Rising Star Awards 2023

Legal Era - Legal Media Group hosted the 8th Annual 40 Under 40 Rising Star Awards 2023 on 7 December, 2023 in the impressive heritage-rich environs of The Taj, Mumbai.

The prestigious Legal Era Awards are a testament to their hard work, dedication and endurance to the legal profession.

The Chief Guest for the 8th Annual 40 Under 40 Rising Star Awards Hon’ble Justice B.N. Srikrishna who graced us with his presence as Legal Era honoured young, up-and-coming talent under the age of 40 years that exemplify vision, leadership, innovation, and accomplishment in the legal fraternity.

He was joined by our distinguished guests Sanjukta Kulkarni, Executive Vice-President and General Counsel, Larsen & Toubro Infotech and Maneck M Mulla, Founder and Managing Partner, M Mulla Associates.

We received a whopping 395 nominations from among whom the winners were selected by our distinguished jury. The nominations came from legal counsels at MNCs, the best young lawyers working in Law Firms, in-house teams, startups, and some extremely promising GCs handling challenging global and pan-India roles.

The awardees included a spectrum of litigators, directors, and more including Partners, Associate Partners, Head of Compliance and Investigation, Head of Legal, Managing Partners, and Director-Legal to Manager Legal, Managing Associates, General Managers, Advocates, Chief Compliance and Legal Officers, Corporate Legal Counsels, DGMs, Deputy General Counsel and General Manager Legal.

Nine years back, Legal Era - Legal Media Group became the first Think Tank and Global Platform to institute the 40 Under 40 Rising Star Awards as a celebration of young achievers for their outstanding contribution to law, their courage to carve new career journeys, and their burning desire to take on challenges head-on!

Here is the list of the winners at the 8th Annual 40 Under 40 Rising Star Awards.

Abhijit Yadav is an in-house legal counsel with 16+ years of experience in the FMCG and Pharma industry. Currently he is associated with Colgate-Palmolive (I) Limited in the capacity of ‘Legal Director’.

Abhijit is a second generation lawyer from Ratnagiri in Maharashtra and has completed his law degree from Govt. Law College, Mumbai. He has also completed P.G. Diploma in IPR & Masters in Business Laws (Distance) from National Law School Bangalore and ‘Credentials of Readiness’ from Harvard Business School Online.

He has worked in the Food, Cosmetics & Pharma industry with companies such as Marico, L’Oreal & Sanofi.

Abhishek Dadoo is a Partner in the Public M&A practice group in the Mumbai office. He routinely advises financial and strategic investors on listed company transactions and has been involved in friendly as well as hostile acquisitions in the listed space.

Abhishek actively contributes on topics relating to Public M&A, Takeover and Insider Trading Regulations, including engagement with regulators.

Achyut Tewari is a litigation associate at Anand and Anand and has broad experience in dealing with a variety of Intellectual property litigations and strategy along with elements of anti-trust litigation. He is engaged in some of the most complex and high stake IP litigation matters providing litigative support to clientele from across the world upon patent portfolios for agricultural and pharmaceutical products, telecom, etc.; trademark portfolios of a vast array of clients in consumer spaces of logistics and supply chains, liquor, banking, real-state, hospitality, consumer electronics, etc.

He has also been instrumental in litigation and advisory strategy for leading designers and luxury products portfolios for the fashion industry, as well as advising copyright portfolios for filmmakers.

Aditi Singhvi is based out of Mumbai office of CAM. She was elevated to partnership in 2020. Aditi has developed good relationships with various private equity funds such as Blackstone, Warburg Pincus and various cooperation (both domestic and multinational) such as Reliance Limited, Tata Group, Prudential Financial, Inc.

Aditi helped Bank of Baroda on its USD 1.37 Billion acquisition of Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank (closed in April 2019). This was a complex three-way merger under a specialized statute governing nationalized banks. It involved a scheme that was laid before the Indian Parliament for approval and it is the first ever such merger of three nationalized banks in India. The scheme drafted by Aditi was tabled before the Indian Parliament and for this reason was scrutinized by the highest levels of the Indian government. That scheme became the model on which the Indian government merged ten more nationalized banks and all of which were advised by Aditi. IBLJ Deals of the year – 2019.

Alya Khan commenced her career in law in 2011 as an articled clerk with Vivek Vashi and graduated in 2012. Alya qualifies as a Solicitor in 2014 with the Bombay Incorporated Law Society. To Alya, applying the knowledge of law to the client’s specific requirements, coupled with conscientiousness, integrity and producing qualitative work, prevails and sets the benchmark for a successful lawyer.

Alya’s practice primarily focuses on Dispute Resolution including litigation across all fora including the Bombay High Court, Supreme Court, tribunals, domestic and international arbitrations, seated in and outside India, including SIAC arbitrations. As a dispute resolution lawyer with experience across various practice areas and jurisdictions. Alya has appeared and regularly appears at every level of the Indian Judicial System including the Supreme Court, Bombay High Court, Calcutta High Court and various Tribunals. Alya also has experience litigating matters arising under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016.

Anup Kulkarni is a Fellow member of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) and is also enrolled with the Bar Counsel of India. He is a certified Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) professional, and a certified POSH professional as recognized by the ICSI. He is a Partner with JSA and is one of the heads of Corporate Compliance & Secretarial practice at JSA. His practice focuses primarily on corporate compliance, corporate governance & secretarial matters with particular emphasis on corporate laws and Foreign Exchange Regulations. He actively assists in setting up subsidiaries of foreign companies /Special Purpose Vehicles, as well as Branch and Liaison offices in India.

He regularly appears before the National Company Law Tribunal, Reserve Bank of India, Ministry of Corporate Affairs on various compounding and adjudication matters involving private & public companies. He also appears before the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade, Foreign Investment Facilitation Portal, Department of Telecom, Bureau of Indian Standards, Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organization, SEZ & STPI in relation to various compliance, registrations, and licensing matters.

Having enrolled at the Bar a little over 15 years ago, Ashish is a Senior Partner with Jurisperitus Law Offices and practices in the fields of Corporate Commercial and Strategic Advisory & Dispute Resolution. He has educated and worked both in India and USA and is the face of the Firm for many of the Firm’s domestic and international clientele including being Head of the Firm’s Japan Desk.

Ashish represents and advises clients in practice areas relating to Commercial Contracts and Government Tenders, Consumer Disputes, Environment, Real Estate among others. His participation is also actively solicited by clients in strategy discussions and negotiations.

His clientele includes domestic and international companies and his practice covers a wide range of sectors including Real Estate & Infrastructure, Banks & Financial Institutions, Railways, State Governments and Government institutions, Authorities, etc. He regularly advises on various commercial documentation apart from representing clients before various judicial and quasi-judicial fora.

Bhushan Panse joined DSK Legal in August 2007. Bhushan specializes and has extensive experience in Real Estate Practice and Dispute Resolution – Litigation. He has expertise in undertaking legal due diligence and providing a comprehensive legal analysis of risk factors that may be involved in such transactions; advising on acquisition and aggregation of agricultural and nonagricultural properties in the State of Maharashtra and structuring the deals and documenting the same; advising clients in respect of queries raised under the provisions of the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act, 1966, Maharashtra Land Revenue Code, 1966, Maharashtra Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1948 etc. and various other statues dealing with the properties in Maharashtra. He regularly appears for various matters before the High Court, Bombay, Civil Courts, Small Causes Courts.

Bitika Kaur completed her law at the prestigious Department of Law, Calcutta University in 2013 and began her litigation career in Calcutta High Court. She then moved to Mumbai and worked with multiple law firms, before finally joining Apraava Energy Private Limited in 2021 where she currently heads the Litigation and Regulatory Practice. Bitika specializes in civil and commercial litigation, general corporate advisory, ad hoc arbitrations and regulatory litigation. She also reviews the regulatory and policy developments in the power and legal sector, which may have an impact on Apraava, and provides valuable feedback and the way forward in this regard.

Debolina Bahl is Senior Director, Employment Law & Commercial Dispute Governance at LTIMindtree Limited (LTIM) responsible for legal portfolio of one of the fastest growing IT companies. As part of her role, he leads contracts for designated geographies, global employment advice and employment litigation (excluding US). She also extends her support to compliance and data privacy function.

She has diverse experience handling legal matters across companies such as Tech Mahindra & Capgemini India. Over the course of her career, Debolina has advised on several large value deals, employment law, litigations, advisory on M&A integration and general policy matters including on rebadging employees.

As Senior Corporate Counsel at Amazon Seller Services, Harshit oversees legal functions and negotiated pivotal agreements but also contributed significantly to the strategic success of the organization. He has also worked with various reputed organizations earlier at leadership roles.

Imon Roy is a Senior Associate in the Litigation (IT and e-Commerce Practice) in the Noida office. Imon has been twice rated as Rising IP Star, India, Asia-Pacific Region, by Managing Intellectual Property in 2020 & 2019. Imon also has experience with Khaitan & Co. (Noida) as an Associate.

In her area of practice, Imon has represented and advised various clients such as Microsoft Corporation in combating Tech-Support Fraud scam on impersonation of client & service, with the CBI under Operation Chakra II and Special Cell, Cyber Unit, Delhi Police; and before the Delhi High Court for trademark and copyright infringement as also world’s leading 3D Design, 3D CAD & Engineering Software Companies before Delhi High Court for copyright infringement by software piracy; Before the Adjudicating Authority under IT Act, 2000 for complaint under S. 66A and S. 43 of the Act amongst others.

Jayesh Kothari works extensively in practice areas of M & A, Joint Ventures, Private/Venture Capital, Corporate & Commercial Advisory. He is a transactional lawyer and advises clients on their investment and strategic decisions in the areas of corporate laws, commercial laws and other related laws. He is well experienced as a corporate lawyer and has significant transactional experience on a variety of transactions in diversified sectors. At DSK Legal, Jayesh is also a member of the firm’s international outreach programme which aimed to focus on foreign investments in India and outbound investments from India. Prior to joining DSK Legal he was associated with the Corporate team at Amarchand Mangaldas & Suresh Shroff (now Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas).

Megha Babar has experience in handling a plethora of legal cases of various areas of law including strategic handling of cases with a significant experience in a contractual and commercial exploitation of Intellectual Property and Commercial Agreements. She is a legal brand strategist for some of the big conglomerates in the field of adoption, protection and increasing visibility of brands.

Megha has rendered specialized services to fortune 500 companies with regards to opinion relating to licensing and franchising, with a large conversion rate for successfully concluding matters relating to takeovers, acquisitions, mergers, slump sales and joint ventures.

Mitali Naik joined DSK Legal in May 2011. Mitali is a Solicitor by qualification and specializes in matters relating to Real Estate. Her Specific expertise includes advising leading builders and developers on acquisition and aggregation of agricultural and non-agricultural properties in the State of Maharashtra, structuring the deals and documenting the same; undertaking legal due diligence and providing a comprehensive legal analysis of risk factors that may be involved in the transactions. Issuance of title certificates verifying the title of the owners/ developers in respect of properties; sdvising clients in respect of various queries raised under the provisions of the Maharashtra Land Revenue Code, 1966, Maharashtra Tenancy and Agricultural Lands Act, 1948, Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act, 1975, Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, Development Control and Promotional Regulations, 2034, etc. and various other statues.

Pallavi Bhatnagar is a lawyer and Registered Patent Agent with over 5 years of diverse experience in Intellectual Property (IP) litigation, IP prosecution, advisory and compliance. She joined the firm in 2020 after working in patent prosecution at another top-tier IP firm. Pallavi’s technical and legal background helps her in handling a wide variety of tasks, such as, analysing and drafting patent specifications, patent prosecution before the Indian Patent Office, conducting prior art searches, FTO analysis and due diligence, understanding complex patents, preparing technical reports and affidavits, licensing and IP strategy. She is a part of a team representing various multi-national companies in highly contentious matters before the High Court of Delhi, including matters related to Standard Essential Patents (SEP).

Pankaj Sevta has led more than 25 merger and acquisitions as non-litigation legal head/ Senior legal manager and led a team of 25 people with a span of last approx 18 months. He is in charge of not only Ofbusiness (being Unicorn) but also handling entire legal operations at Oxyzo (NBFC-SI, Unicorn) .

Persis Hodiwalla always prioritizes her client’s deliverables and made sure that the agreements are aligned as per the requirements irrespective of the timings. Last year i.e. from 2022 to 2023 till date, Persis has been a part of numerous Legal Speaking Panels organised by various Legal Fraternities across India and Dubai. She keeps herself updated with all the latest laws, judgements, case-laws, commercials deals etc. prevailing in the media and entertainment sector. This also enables her to be a prominent speaker at these panels and make sure that the audience is enlightened listening to her speech. She also time and again participates in Seminars organised by various educational institutions on intellectual property and dealing with commercial transactions in the media and entertainment sector. On 18th February 2023, Persis was invited to be a Speaker at Global Intellectual Property Convention, Goa and spoke on the Topic of Intellectual Property in Content Curation. On the dais, she was accompanied by other litigating lawyers who were from Trademark and Patent Industry.

Priya Singh is a Partner in the Dispute Resolution practice group in the NCR office of Khaitan & Co. She specialises in advising clients on infrastructure and energy arbitrations and extensively advises clients on strategizing, drafting, and regularly represents them before Institutional (HKIAC, SIAC, and LCIA) and ad hoc arbitrations seated in India and abroad.

Priya has been practicing for over a decade now and regularly appears before all forums including the Supreme Court of India, High Courts across the Country, National Company Law Tribunals, and District Courts in Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai, Hyderabad, Nagpur, and Gujarat.

She has also worked as a Judicial Clerk in the High Court of Delhi, giving her substantial exposure to experience the practice and procedures of the Court from both sides, from the bar as well as the bench.

Rohan Ahuja is an alumnus of the prestigious Faculty of Law, University of Delhi. His expertise lies in handling complex & multi-jurisdictional issues pertaining to commercial/ contractual disputes, Information Technology, Intellectual Property Rights & Real Estate. Apart from litigation, Rohan also provides advisory both foreign and domestic clients on several aspects of corporate and regulatory compliance. Apart from Civil law, Rohan also has experience in criminal law and regularly advises clients on various aspect thereof. He regularly represents clients before the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India, High Court of Delhi, Punjab & Haryana High Court, Bombay High Court, and other Courts/Tribunals across India and has handled critical and significant cases relating to commercial contracts, Intermediary liability, Infringement & Passing Off actions, Insolvency, and Employment/Labour disputes amongst others.

Rozmin Lakhani is a seasoned lawyer and a proven people leader with 15 years of experience with cross domain expertise in dispute resolution, financial services, technology, and payments spread across law firms and in house roles.

Rozmin is a Senior Counsel (Director – Legal) with Mastercard, a global technology company in the payment industry. In her current role at Mastercard, she is responsible and a trusted legal advisor for all product management and commercialization efforts in the Asia Pacific region in relation to Commercial & SME Business within Mastercard.

She joined Mastercard in 2019 as a Counsel to provide legal support on emerging technology issues and to handle global and regional technology contracts and mergers and acquisition and integration of acquired businesses. Later, she played an expanded role to build, mentor and lead the legal team, to provide legal support on customer contracts for several business units within Mastercard. This expanded opportunity allowed Rozmin to leverage her legal expertise and accelerated her experience and exposure within Mastercard.

Sameena Chatrapathy has been a part of the Chennai office of the Firm since its inception and co-heads the office. She has been a lead member of the Corporate and Transactional Team assisting and advising domestic and foreign clients through the life span of transactions and has led on some of the highest valued transactions in healthcare, energy and information technology sectors.

Over the last decade, Sameena has worked on several Private Equity and M&A transactions, both in India and overseas and has also facilitated raising of debt funding from banking and financial institutions for corporates in the healthcare and life sciences space, and has represented some of the most renowned names in the business which include Eastern Spices, Aster Hospitals, Strides Pharma, Solara, Omnivore Partners, Celesta Capital, Info Edge, Dare Ventures, Coromandel International Limited and, Premji Invest, GeneSys Biologics, Biocon as well as worked with financial institutions such as HDFC and Reliance.

Satabdee Mohanty works on Transactional, Advisory, Intellectual Property, Compliance, Disputes & Litigations. She is Lead Counsel for analytical instruments division and all its sub-divisions for APAC including tender business, manufacturing along with leading legal for marketing, sales, SCM, operations, HR, administrative functions, finance, IT, regulatory and working closely with government relations. She works on setting up compliance framework across functions for India Business and supporting EMEA and ANZ business for strategic and legal advisory, transactional and contentious matters.

Saurabh Gupta is a Partner at Solomon & Co., spearheading the real estate practice with an impressive track record in both conventional as well as contemporary real estate transactions. Saurabh has an in-depth knowledge of the industry, coupled with more than a decade of experience in interacting with several established real estate groups across India. He holds a bachelor’s degree in law and a post-graduation degree in Business Laws from National Law School of India University, Bangalore. He has comprehensive transactional experience in real estate ranging from development of integrated townships, built-up infrastructure and energy projects, logistics, warehousing, residential and commercial development and redevelopment including slum rehabilitation schemes, joint ventures, real-estate funds, industry set-ups in India, land acquisition transactions, land title due diligence of all types of immovable properties and wide array of real estate transactions across India. He has advised and represented several fortune 500 companies, power generation companies, domestic and foreign banks, high net worth individuals, societies/associations and top realty firms. He is both well-versed and experienced with local property laws and regulations operational in various states of India, and also with the laws relating to investment in India from a Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) perspective. His practice areas include real estate laws, construction and development, corporate commercial transactions, dispute resolution and inheritance & succession laws.

Saurabh Kumar major focus is in Mining, oil and gas criminal, transactions and corporate, capital markets and tax law. He has handled both upstream & midstream oil & gas, projects with a focus on transactional and corporate work involving high-end sophisticated transactions for some of the leading companies present in India and East Africa.

He has been involved in drafting, reviewing and negotiating operatorship agreements, implementation agreements, conducted PSA negotiations, gas sales agreements, negotiations with government for mining and oil and gas contracts.

Saurabh has appeared before various international tribunals for arbitration on matters related to contractual disputes in the energy and mining sector, the most recent one related to the price calculation of gas. He has been advising various companies establishing their business in India and also advised leading global developers and marketer of various branded product on their various crucial and strategic decision-making processes. He has dealt with a broad range of matters related to cheating, forgery, criminal breach of trust, misappropriation, cybercrimes, corporate fraud, negligence, counterfeit currency, offences involving weights and measures, Motor Vehicles Act, Negotiable Instruments Act, Legal Metrology Act, Rules and Enforcement Directorate cases, Central Bureau of Investigation cases, arbitration matters.

Smreeti Prakash advises business functions on strategic transactions and new business initiatives. She is also the legal business partner for the Operations & HR function and leads the advisory on the S&R initiatives of the organization.

As part of corporate practice, Smreeti has a rich legal professional experience of over 15 years working across diverse sectors including Energy & Infrastructure, hospitality, manufacturing, alco-bev etc.

She spent her first four years in private practice with some of the largest law firms in India, followed by in-house legal positions. During her professional journey, Smreeti has specialized in broad spectrum of legal, compliance, regulatory practice including strategic & business advisory, structuring complex commercial transactions incl. deal structuring, cross border M&A, financing (including asset & project financing), setting up greenfield projects, risk assessment & setting up robust compliance programs. Having worked in diverse sectors, she has garnered significant experience on regulatory issues & general corporate advisory.

Stuti Tandon is primarily involved in developing strategies and structures for acquisitions and restructuring of the business, negotiating and managing the acquisition related documentation, managing due diligence process and liaising with internal stakeholders and counterparty to achieve timebound and cost efficient completion.

She is actively involved in post‐merger nuances and regulatory compliances as well as involved in the financing portfolio of the company focusing on the different debt and equity models being followed by the company. She also provides advisory on transaction structuring, risks and creation and enforcement of security and negotiates with financial organizations so as to ensure that the company’s interests are protected and the internal policies as and standards are complied with and in line with the regulatory framework.

Subhojit Sadhu is based out at of CAM’s Mumbai office. He has worked on over 500 transaction in the debt financing space in for a career spanning 15 years.

He has worked and led the deal on Renew RTC – Financing of the first round-the clock renewable power generation being developed by a special purpose vehicle set up by Renew Power Limited. The deal involved an external commercial borrowing of USD 1 billion. The deal won the APLMA Renewable Energy Deal of the Year in 2023 and Asia Pacific Deal of the Year 2023 and the Renewable Deal of the Year in the Asset Triple A Sustainable Infrastructure Awards 2023.

Vijay Purohit has over 14 years of experience in dispute resolution. His practice focuses on International and Domestic Arbitration, Corporate/Commercial disputes, Labour and Employment and Insolvency laws.

Vijay is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb), London and has appeared in arbitration cases in India and abroad in both, ad-hoc and institutional arbitrations in various sectors including E-commerce, Oil and Gas, Energy, Healthcare, and Energy Management and Automation. Vijay is also a member of the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) and the International Bar Association (IBA).

As a litigator, Vijay has represented clients before the Bombay High Court as well as other High Courts in the country, National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) (Mumbai and other benches) and NCLAT, Lower Courts and Tribunals, and Quasi-Judicial Authorities.

Vinaya Natarajan is a Senior Director, Legal at LTIMindtree, leading commercial transactions for LTIMindtree’s largest verticals. She is an experienced and recognized transactions attorney who has negotiated multi-million-dollar, multi-jurisdictional deals for companies across the world, including previous stints at Wipro, the Hinduja group and the Tata Group. She is a data privacy expert with both operational and advisory experience in all major privacy legislations including GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, PIPL and DPDP. In her fifteen years of work as an in-house counsel, she has handled a diverse portfolio that includes mergers and acquisitions, regulatory compliance, employment and investigations, and ethics and governance. She has a deep interest in diversity and inclusion initiatives and is a strong advocate of increasing women’s representation in, and access to, the workplace.

Vivaik Sharma has more than 12 years of experience of representing reputed fund houses on structuring and setting up investment vehicles including venture capital funds, private equity funds, hedge funds, real estate funds, infrastructure funds, PIPE funds, fund of funds, pre-IPO funds, etc.

He has advised fund managers in structuring, formation and operation of bespoke investment structures and with certain investor disputes.

He has advised UK India Development Cooperation Fund (UKIDCF), the investment platform of Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (UK Government) & FCDO for their investments in various investee funds (ongoing) and many more.